1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system and method for control of web pages.
2. Background Information
Various types of networks include at least one server and at least one client. The servers and clients may comprise various forms of computers, such as desktops, rack-mounted systems, portables, handhelds, etc. The “Internet,” for example, provides a communication infrastructure between various servers and clients. The present disclosure, however, is not limited to any particular number of servers or clients, nor is it limited to the Internet context.
In the context of the Internet, servers generally provide “web pages” to clients. A client typically executes a web browser application that permits a user of the client to interact with one or more servers. Each web page may comprise a hypertext mark-up language (“HTML”) code that, when executed by the browser application causes the client to display information. The user may “click” a software button on the displayed web page and/or enter information. By way of example, such information may include the user's name, address, a username, password, etc.
The delivery of web pages from the server to the client over the network infrastructure takes time. To expedite the presentation of web pages on the client computer, a caching mechanism may be employed on the client. If caching is enabled, the client may store each web page delivered from the server in storage local to the client. Such cached web pages may be stored, for example, in a directory on the client's hard disk drive. Then, when the client's browser requests a web page that happens to be cached on the client (which may occur when the user clicks on the “BACK” button on the browser graphical user interface), the client's browser may retrieve the locally cached copy of the requested page from its own storage, rather than requesting the server to provide the requested page again.
As noted above, the user may click on the “BACK” button to pull up a previous web page. A “repeat action” problem may occur when the user re-submits from the previous page. For example, a user may log on to a service hosted on a server by entering a username and password on a “log on” screen and clicking on a “submit” button (e.g., a button labeled “OK”). Clicking the “submit” button may cause the client to transmit the user's username and password to the server. The server may use that information to log the user in to the applicable service. Once logged in to the service, the server transmits the next page to the client. If, at that point, however, the user clicks the “BACK” button, the “log on” screen page will be displayed on the client computer thereby permitting the user again to log on to the same service. This may result in the user undesirably logging on to the service twice. By way of an additional example, re-submitting a data entry page (e.g., a page in which the user has entered name and address information) may cause the server to store that information twice in a server-side database, thereby unnecessarily using excessive server resources.
Another problem may also arise in which a user submits from a data entry page. The submission may cause the server to pass control to a “save” page in which the server performs an action based on the user-supplied data. The action may be, for example, to write the user-supplied data to a server database. Once this action completes, the server then may submit from the save page to a display page. This process may be undesirably time consuming.
The subject matter described below addresses any or all of the aforementioned problems.